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Changes needed on tickets-for-tuition

It all sounds like an almost botched opportunity — one that hopefully still can be salvaged.

A donor couple — Gregory Burt and Suzie Glazer Burt of Des Moines — agrees to provide the University of Iowa with enough money to cover one year's worth of in-state tuition for five current UI students.

There's a clear philanthropic motivation at work, yet the couple also likes the idea of awarding those tuition credits to students who have demonstrated their strong commitment to the Hawkeyes by purchasing season football tickets. So the couple makes the donation, with that understanding.

The UI athletics and marketing departments move into action to tie that donation to existing efforts to get more students to attend the home football games.

In their haste, however, the departments don't have the program properly vetted by UI's legal staff. Soon after the announcement, the state's Department of Inspections and Appeals — because there is a required purchase involved with the tuition credit — raises red flags that the program qualifies as a raffle yet doesn't follow all the state's regulations for a raffle.

Nor do the departments fully consider how easily such a "buy a season ticket, have a chance to win a year's tuition" scheme fits into the "Beer and Circus" critique of big money college athletics.

Nor do they fully consider how it looks for Iowa's flagship university to be raffling off tuition credits at a time when Iowa is without a statewide program for providing needs-based scholarships for students from low-income families.

Nor do they fully consider how such a program might be perceived by UI faculty, staff and students who already worry that their academic units and budgets are under siege by the efficiency consultants hired by the Iowa state Board of Regents.

Within a few days, the athletics department announces a temporary suspension of the program so officials can work with Attorney General's Office and others to resurrect the program — probably as a "no purchase required" sweepstakes. Under such a framework, students who purchase season tickets would be automatically registered in the sweepstakes, but UI officials would have to come up with a way through which other qualified students could enter as well.

As of Friday afternoon, the details of revived program were still being worked out, and it was unclear when any extended deadline for entry would be.

Although we're still not crazy about the idea of giving out $8,000 tuition credits as if they were Bingo prizes, we would support making this proposal fairer by extending it to include all students — not only those who can afford to purchase season tickets.

When it comes to finding creative ways to help Iowa families pay for college, however, we'd prefer more systematic approaches — ones that consider actual academic achievement and financial need — rather than ones based solely on the luck of the draw.

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